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Quirky diseases
Some diseases are so strange that they sound like invented. But they really do exist: men who suffer from the symptoms of pregnancy, women who think that their spouse is interchanged with a doppelganger, people who have sexual intercourse in their sleep and do not remember it afterwards, and those who are disturbed and who amputate healthy body parts.
The bizarre psychiatric disorders are joined by diseases of the body, which could come directly from a fantasy horror film: people whose bodies harden as in a statue, patients who rake alive and unfortunates who smell like a putrid fish. We show some of the most bizarre diseases in an overview:
contents
- The Couvade Syndrome - When men feel pregnant
- The restless genital syndrome
- Truman syndrome
- Capgras delusion
- Fregoli syndrome
- Cotard delusion
- Reduplicative Paramnesia
- Alien hand syndrome
- Alice in Wonderland syndrome
- Jerusalem Syndrome
- The Paris syndrome
- Stendhal Syndrome
- Diogenes Syndrome
- Apotemnophilia - The desire to mutilate
- Pap Syndrome - The Driveless
- Kufungisisa - Too much thinking makes you sick
- Clinical Lycanthropy - The Werewolf Disorder
- Sex while sleeping
- Rotting alive
- By drinking in a coma
- Sclerodermia - the statuary crane
- Fish odor disease
The Couvade Syndrome - When men feel pregnant
Men with back pain, baby bumps, cravings, mood highs and low as their pregnant partner? This disorder is called Couvade syndrome. The affected person actually grows his stomach, they have to vomit or start crying.
Men are "co-pregnant". Image: Garevskaya Elina - fotolia In solidarity, men develop such pseudo-pregnancies, according to psychology. Some researchers also suspect Gebweisneid as a trigger for this behavior. Those affected would not accept that they can not have children and so at least mimic the complaints.
Neurologically, the mirror neurons enter into force. These nerve cells cause the affected person the same actions he was watching. So a person suffering from Couvade syndrome sees his wife's discomfort, and his nervous system transmits the same sensations to his own body.
The restless genital syndrome
Those affected are constantly scratching the genitals. Tight jeans, underpants, sit on a chair, even a gust of wind from the front trigger a strong itching. It is by no means arousal. Men do not experience erections and women do not get wet.
Doctors found this disorder most common in postmenopausal women. Most of them had previously suffered from Rastlose-Bein syndrome.
A Bernese doctor reports an interesting antidote: orgasm. In a 50-year-old female patient, the symptoms diminished considerably when she came to orgasm during sex.
The number of unreported cases of this syndrome is probably very high, because many sufferers are ashamed to go to the doctor.
It is believed to be a disorder of the genital nerves within a polyneuropathy. For such a neuropathy speaks that many sufferers had similar pain previously in other parts of the body.
Anti-epileptic drugs, opiates and anti-depressants are used as medication for the complaints.
Truman syndrome
As Truman syndrome, American psychiatrists describe a delusion in which those affected think their entire life is a television show. It is named after "The Truman Show" from 1998, a film in which the main character Truman Burbank without his knowledge starred in a series that has been broadcasting his life since his birth on television.
However, those affected do not suffer from excessive narcissism, so they believe that they are a terrific movie star, but that they do not seem to have any privacy. They believe that all their contacts and relationships are part of a script and that each of their movements is recorded.
The New York psychiatrist Joel Gold reported on a man who said he had to climb the Statue of Liberty - only then would finally be over with the TV show. Even the psychiatrist considered him an actor.
Capgras delusion
The Capgras syndrome is named after the French psychiatrist who discovered it. Sufferers believe that spouses, relatives or friends are replaced by doppelgangers. This delusion belongs to the schizophrenic group, but also occurs in dementia patients, and rarely in epileptics or people with brain damage.
"Exchanged relatives or friends". Affected live in the delusion, they are surrounded by doppelgängern. Image: Lassesesignen - fotolia It is treated like these psychiatric conditions, especially with antipsychotic medications. In dementia, however, cognitive therapies are more useful, since the idea for them comes mainly from general confusion.
Fregoli syndrome
Persons affected by this disorder perceive their social environment in the same way as Capgras patients. Leopoldo Fregoli was an Italian actor and famous for his fast changing roles.
Those affected believe that close people have visually changed and appear as strangers. They believe that a human being could take the form of another human being and thus masquerade. Affected are also people with epilepsy, dementia or schizophrenia.
Cotard delusion
Cotard syndrome takes its name from Jules Cotard, a French physician who diagnosed it in 1880. Sufferers believe that they were dead, decayed, had lost blood or internal organs.
Psychotic episodes and schizophrenia patients most often develop this disorder.
Reduplicative Paramnesia
In this neurological disorder, those affected believe that places or objects exist simultaneously in different places. Unlike Capgras syndrome, however, they do not see this change in humans.
Alien hand syndrome
In alien hand syndrome, those affected can no longer control a hand willingly. They feel their hand normal, but feel it as a part of the body that acts autonomously.
The affected are fully conscious, can use the unaffected hand willfully, the disturbed hand is unpredictable. This disorder occurs in a stroke or other brain damage.
Alice in Wonderland syndrome
Affected see their environment like Alice the Wonderland: things and people appear larger or smaller than usual, speeds are slower and faster. Those affected are confused because the size and shape of individual parts of the body of the person change in perception.
Those affected are not mentally ill and usually know that they are hallucinations. Often they feel alienated and suffer from panic attacks.
The disorder often occurs in migraine, brain tumors or psychoactive substances such as LSD. The best therapy is rest. Those affected best avoid all stimuli, lie down and close their eyes.
In severe cases help anticonvulsants, antidepressants, beta-blockers and calcium channel blockers.
Jerusalem Syndrome
Affected by this disorder develop delusions surrounding the visit of the city of Jerusalem.
Those affected are already suffering from clinical mental disorders, and when in Jerusalem, psychosis breaks out.
Feeling like Jesus leads to the obsession of being Jesus Himself. Picture: mbolina - fotolia The Paris syndrome
The Paris Syndrome affects Japanese tourists. They suffer a psychotic form of culture shock in Paris. They get extreme fears, lose their personality, develop conspiracy fantasies and hallucinations.
Among about 6 million Japanese tourists visiting Paris annually, about 20 develop this disorder. Otherwise they are psychologically normal.
Stendhal Syndrome
Those affected by Stendhal syndrome develop extreme anxieties, they are confused and lose the sense of space and time, and some are even plagued by hallucinations. The triggers are works of art that people find particularly beautiful, or that can be seen more often in one place than in the Vatican Museums or the Louvre. It usually regulates itself and does not require medication.
Diogenes Syndrome
Affected by this syndrome recall the popular idea of Messies. They lose their sense of shame, neglecting themselves, withdrawing, becoming apathetic and compulsively collecting garbage. The eponym was the Greek philosopher Diogenes of Sinope (412 to 323) BC. BC, who despised wealth, power, health, and glory, and lived free of possessions. He allegedly lived in a wine barrel in the streets of Athens. The syndrome does not do justice to the philosopher; he neglected neither his hygiene nor he lived in the trash. Affected by the disorder are mainly old people with progressive dementia.
Apotemnophilia - The desire to mutilate
Those who suffer from this disorder do not perceive their body as a unity, and body parts disturb him so that he wants to separate them. Cause is probably a nerve disorder. Sometimes sufferers amputate their own extremities: fingers, toes or whole hands.
Of course, surgeons refuse to amputate healthy limbs, and sufferers become injured in such a way that the doctor has no other option - for example because of the risk of blood poisoning. The amputation felt by the patients as a relief.
Those affected have the right brain damaged. Therapy is very difficult, as those affected have no insight into their disease. They often meet Arotomophile, sexual fetishists who are aroused by people with amputations.
Pap Syndrome - The Driveless
Who suffers from Pap syndrome, who can not decide on an action - in the pathological sense. He does not eat anything unless he is reminded and seated at the table. He feels hungry, but he can not decide, even if the indecision costs his life.
Those affected need to take notes so they can take a shower, brush their teeth, comb their hair or go shopping. This is not due to forgetfulness.
It is typical that those affected do not get bored despite the fact that they are not. With them, the basal ganglia are disturbed, the switching points of the brain, which forward the emotional impulses of the limbic system to the frontal lobe. The information is thus no longer in the area where the conscious decisions are made.
Psychiatrist fascinates the syndrome because it can tell a lot about how human will arises.
Kufungisisa - Too much thinking makes you sick
The Shona in Simbobwe know the disease Kufunisisa. That means "think too much". Those who suffer from it develop anxiety disorders and depression. He ponders around so much that he feels worse and worse, and can hardly do anything about this thinking.
Cognitive behavioral therapies promise to reduce compulsive thinking, but also common treatments for anxiety disorders and depression.
Clinical Lycanthropy - The Werewolf Disorder
Clinical lycanthropes suffer from the delusion of turning into a wolf. The best-known example is the Spanish serial killer Romasanta, who was tried in 1854 for murdering 13 people.
He believed that the devil had cursed him to periodically turn into a wolf and kill people. The court psychiatrist diganosticated pathological lycanthropy and Romasanta was not executed, but spent the rest of his life in a madhouse.
The term derives from King Lykaon of Arcadia, who brought to the god Zeus human flesh as a meal and which the father of the gods therefore turned into a wolf.
Pathological lycanthropy is one of the delusional misidentifications and therefore usually occurs in the schizophrenic group, in manic-depressive psychosis, the borderline syndrome, dissociative disorder or psychosis due to drugs or drugs.
Sex while sleeping
Some people not only dream of sex during sleep, but have sex while in deep sleep. We then talk about sex somnia. It is a non-organic sleep disorder.
Those affected awake, masturbate or perform sexual acts with those present, but they do not come to consciousness from non-REM sleep. Mostly they do not remember their actions when they wake up.
Three times as often men show this behavior. Violent acts often occur during sleep, and sufferers fear being perceived as simulants when they say they can not remember what they did.
Those affected use erotic language while sleeping and masturbate - when they wake up they are often sexually aroused. People with Restless Legs Syndrome or severe sleep urine are particularly likely to suffer from this disorder.
Rotting alive
One of the worst diseases is necrosing fascitis. The body rots alive.
Blame are streptococci, carnivorous bacteria. They invade the skin through wounds, multiply there, release toxins and enzymes. Externally, dark bubbles appear. The meat decomposes.
The poisons can trigger a septic shock. Then the kidneys fail, the breath stops, and the heart stops working.
The best thing is to cut out the infected tissue completely. Initially, the bacteria can still be treated with antibiotics, but the first stage resembles a flu, so we usually do not recognize the danger.
By drinking in a coma
Those who do not drink enough burden their bodies. But who drinks too much water, can fall into a coma. This condition is called hyponatremia. The reason is an imbalance between water and sodium.
Satisfied by drinking into a coma. Image: CandyBox Images - fotolia When we sweat we lose water as well as sodium. If we only eat water now, there is no sodium in the blood. The body can not spread the water and swells up. The brain swells - it starts with a headache, and in less than an hour we can fall into a coma.
We can easily counteract such sodium deficiency by eating saline foods like chips, salted peanuts or salted herring.
Sclerodermia - the statuary crane
Who suffers from this disorder, freezes. The skin becomes so hardened that those affected can barely move and stand like a statue in the same pose. The cause is a disease of the autoimmune system.
The weakened body deposits its excess of collagen everywhere. After years, the skin harden like the internal organs. Each year, sclerodemia kills 10,000 people.
Fish odor disease
People who suffer from trimethylaminuria do not die from it, but their social contacts cause considerable damage. Those affected stink of rotten fish - from the mouth, sweat and urine. They lack an enzyme that breaks down trimethylamine, the stuff that makes fish stink.
For example, our body produces this intense-smelling substance when we use eggs, liver or soybeans. It is a genetic mutation. That's why no drugs help. (Dr. Utz Anhalt)
Specialist supervision: Barbara Schindewolf-Lensch (doctor)